


sniper and shield

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6944725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rogers and Barnes, against the world. Maybe that's enough.</p><p>[wartime musings from one James Buchanan Barnes, where he gets to be Steve's light instead of his shadow, for once.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	sniper and shield

  
“You smile a lot,” Steve comments, and it kills you   
that some days he sounds almost _confused._  
Like happiness is some kind of foreign fucking concept  
to the kid you once called your own ray of sunshine—  
warm and bright and liable to linger   
long after you’d closed your eyes,  
the heat of him a living thing that twisted through you  
joyously.

“Sure I do,” you say easily,  
because you _do,_ because what’s there not  
to smile about? Sure, it’s wartime  
and people are dying, and  
you smell like a goddamned cesspit.  
But you got cigarettes and a gun   
and a mission to keep your eyes on,  
and you got friends, people who  
die for you, and kill for you, and.   
Well. You got him.  
  
You figure: ain’t a bad life,  
not so long as you got any life at all.  
  
“Mostly, I’m picturing you in those shorts,”  
you tease, a shit-eating smirk at the corners   
of your mouth, smoke circling your head  
and that one piece of hair you can’t ever tame  
falling over your brow.  
  
Steve rolls his eyes, and affection flickers   
across his own lips, turns them up sweetly,  
a slow rise like the sun cresting the sea.  
_He_ doesn’t smile enough, not even  
with his new body and his new girl, like  
this whole new life will never quite see that old   
full-body laughter, the kind that shook his bones  
and trembled in the pits of your own belly  
whenever you heard it.  
  
“There ya go,” you cajole gently,  
touching the back of his head, tucking   
his forehead against your shoulder  
bringing him down like he’s five foot nothing again  
lost and alone and unwilling to ask for help  
from anyone but you.

Because, yeah. You’re a gun,  
sharp and deadly and ready to  
fire.

But you’re also a shield,  
like the one he’s got in the   
crook of his elbow. 

Shooting ain’t the only skill you got;  
protecting comes just as natural.

Better than anyone, you know  
that even the righteous get tired, and  
even the brave get scared,  
and longer than you’ve ever been a soldier  
you’ve been his friend. You can see  
the shadows in his eyes and  
the uncertainty in his spine.  
  
You’ll do what you can to infuse some  
of your light into his dark,  
to take away some burdens from the man  
who has always worn them all like a mantle.  
  
“C'mere, idiot,” you grumble  
and you bring him closer even  
as his grin crumbles, tousle his hair  
and jostle him around, let him  
feel weightless and secure  
all at once.  
  
He huffs, somewhere between a laugh  
and an exhalation of air that just about  
breaks your heart with the force of  
its melancholy.  
  
“It gets hard to smile, out here,"   
he says, every word muffled in the skin  
of your throat. "but you remind me  
why I ought to.”  
  
His mouth moves against  
the curve of your jaw, then.  
There’s a jump in your chest  
like your very heart is jackrabbiting  
out of the cage your ribs make.

“That’s me,” you joke, a raw catch  
to your voice that you hope he doesn’t notice.  
“Better than all the USO girls. Better than  
_Captain America,_  even.”

Steve huffs again, this time a little more amused,  
breathes like he’s fortifying himself, like he’s  
sucking in all the energy he can soak up from the  
place where his hands curl under your jacket   
and his cheek rests against your chest.  
  
“You’re a good man, Bucky,” he says  
quietly and fervently, the sincerity that throbs   
through his words so earnest that it almost  
makes you blush.  
  
"Yeah, well, you ain’t so bad yourself,”  
and even though he won’t ever ask for the  
benediction or the balm, you can see  
how every single one of Steve’s muscles   
relaxes under the gentle gift  
of your words.

The future might turn you both into monsters  
but you’re not one yet, and neither is he.  
Here in the moment, with nothing but love and trust  
wending between your bodies,  
that’s all that matters.  
  
You rest your chin on the crown of Steve’s head,  
and look down at the awkward jumble of his limbs  
as he arranges himself around you,  
one half of a whole that will always be   
two dumb kids with no one but each other,  
  
and you let your smile widen.  
  
Because here, he doesn't have to be a recruitment poster  
or a wartime darling  
or a military tactician way over his fool head.  
Here, you don't gotta be the empty shell of  
whatever experiment got started on a torture table in Azzano.  
In the quiet hush of your tent,  
stretched out in the snow and the dirt,  
all you are is the best friend of a kid who  
never figured out when to quit.  
  
You can't keep him safe, not the way you used to.  
But you can still keep him tethered  
feet on the ground and shoulders squared  
on the strength of a whispered joke or a sideways grin  
the gentle squeeze of your hand around his bicep  
as you watch kids younger than you  
get blown all the way to hell.  
  
War is shit  
and you've both got your own paths  
to travel before you ever come home again.  
  
For now, though  
and for as long as you can make sure of it,  
every pathway will lead from and come back to  
moments like this:

Rogers and Barnes,  
against the world.

Maybe that's enough.

**Author's Note:**

> written ages ago for samantha. repackaged and rewritten in the wake of cacw feelings for bucky :(


End file.
